


Ghost Stories

by LtLJ



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Action/Adventure, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-06
Updated: 2006-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-03 08:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtLJ/pseuds/LtLJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Stargate Anonymous. John was pretty sure SG-1 had never shown up, offered to help, and been told, Oh, well, uh, isn't there someone else you could send?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Stories

John thought M4H-377 was going to be easy. The view from the jumper had shown that the area around the gate was semi-tropical, lush and green. The village was less than a mile from a wide white sand beach embracing a very blue sea, and the weather was warm and sunny. The people had a good reputation as reliable traders; they grew a variety of fruits that were much sought after, so they were used to a lot of offworld traffic.

As John walked up the path through the trees, the first view of the village seemed to bear that out. It was big, with large grass-thatched huts on wooden platforms, and there were drying racks for fish and hides, and big painted pottery storage containers. But when they reached the outskirts, the people gathering there all threw themselves down on the ground.

John froze, Rodney made a startled noise, and Teyla actually flinched backward and stepped on Ford.

The people all looked healthy and normal, not something you usually associated with groveling. They were dressed to fit the warm climate in brightly-colored sarong outfits or loose white shirts and pants.

John waited a minute, but nothing happened. "Hey there," he said, easing forward and hoping this was a planet-specific greeting ritual their other trading contacts had forgotten to warn them about. "Are we supposed to be down there with you or...?"

No answer. The natives just tried to sink down a little further into the grass and weeds. John looked at the others. Ford was torn between suspicion and discomfort, Rodney looked incredulous, and Teyla was horrified. Brow furrowed, she said, "This is...unusual. I have never encountered it before."

Rodney muttered, "Yes, you can always count on our missions to broaden your horizons in unpleasant ways." He eyed the groveling people suspiciously. "So...I take it this probably isn't the prelude to some sort of attack?"

"Maybe they saw the jumper land, and it scared them," Ford pointed out reasonably.

John nodded to himself. "Right." Resisting the urge to say, "I'm going in," he crouched down and tried to get eyelevel with the leader. "Hi. We're peaceful explorers. What are you?"

The guy hunkered down a little more to avoid eye contact, forcing John to get into a pretzel-like position and become more intimate with his P-90 than he wanted to be to maintain it. In a husky whisper, the guy said, "You are the Ancestors."

"Oh." John threw a look back up at the others. This was a ticklish situation. These people didn't look like they were suddenly going to jump up, whip out weapons, and turn into crazed religious fanatics, but you never could tell. Rodney was nodding yes, Teyla was shaking her head no, and Ford shrugged. _Yeah, that's helpful._ John turned back to the leader and said cautiously, "Maybe. Why do you ask?"

The guy looked uncertain. "You have a ship of the Ancestors."

Rodney abruptly flung himself down, knocking John back on his butt. "How do you know what a ship of the Ancestors looks like?" he demanded.

"We saw the drawings on the walls of the temple, before we were forced to leave it," the leader answered, startled.

"What temple--" Rodney began, but Teyla, apparently unable to take any more groveling, crouched down to join the conversation, saying, "I am Athosian, and my people also revere the Ancestors, and we are certain they would not require this kind of behavior."

"Oh." The guy lifted his head to look at them, and the others stirred, peeking at them with a little more confidence. "We have been praying to the Ancestors for help, and then we saw your flying ship come through the Ring, and we thought..." He looked hopeful.

"What kind of help?" John asked, at the same time Rodney said, "What temple? Where?" They glared at each other.

"McKay, just wait a minute, all right?" John said through gritted teeth. He liked to gently work up to _hey, can we ransack your temple?_ rather than just blurting it out. He added pointedly, "Maybe it's something simple we can help with, and then they can show us their Ancient temple and all the interesting things that might be in it."

"It's never simple!" Rodney snapped.

"The temple is the thing we need help with," the leader said quickly, apparently realizing that if he wanted to get a word in he needed to be more assertive.

"What kind of help?" Teyla asked, smiling encouragingly.

The leader sat back on his heels, and explained, "The ghost of an Ancestor has come to live there, and it is very angry."

  
***

  
The leader's name was Raedyl and he had agreed to take them to the temple. The path to it led toward the sea, through a forest of palm trees that sported bright pink and purple flowers. Raedyl kept saying, "You understand, it is very bad. Very dangerous."

"We understand," John said for the third time, trying not to take it personally. The fact that Raedyl apparently didn't want to send them unawares into what he thought was a nasty situation spoke well for him. But John was pretty sure SG-1 had never shown up, offered to help, and been told, _Oh, well, uh, isn't there someone else you could send?_ "Just try to have a little confidence in us, okay?"

"But you say you are not the Ancestors," Raedyl said, worriedly. Hearing that they had actually come here to trade for fruit hadn't increased his confidence in them any either.

Walking on Raedyl's other side, Teyla gave him a reassuring smile and said, "We know the ways of the Ancestors."

"We're sort of distantly related to them," John added. He didn't think the temple could be too impressive, since they hadn't spotted it from the air and neither the jumper nor Rodney's handheld equipment had picked up any energy signatures.

"Then the apparition will listen to you?" Raedyl nodded hopefully.

John thought the apparition was most likely an Ancient hologram that had somehow gotten accidentally turned on. That or something else that would try its damnedest to kill them. "Sure. I mean, probably."

Raedyl didn't look reassured.

Behind them, Rodney was questioning Edar and Leana, Raedyl's wife and mother-in-law, and the dozen other family members who had accompanied them. Or trying to question them, since once they had realized that their guests were only distantly associated with the Ancestors and a lot more approachable than whatever had come to live in their temple, they were eager to tell the story.

"--there are metal panels in the stone, etched with drawings of your flying ship--"

"--we did not see it very well at all. It told us to leave, and seemed very angry--"

"Whoa, whoa!" Rodney waved his hands, trying to call order. "Right, now who actually saw it?" he demanded.

There was a short silence, then they all started talking at once.

"It threw rocks at us," another woman was telling Ford. "It is a very violent ghost."

"So you guys have a lot of problems with ghosts?" Ford asked.

"No, never," the woman said, startled. "Do your people?"

"Um, no, I just thought-- Okay, never mind."

John was glad he wasn't the only one who ended up in conversational cul-de-sacs on these missions. Then he stopped listening, because the flowering trees on either side of the path had opened up into a rice field, and at the end of it was the temple.

It was a lot bigger than he had expected. It had been concealed from the air because vines had grown up the sides and over the roof, obscuring the carving, and the stone was tinted green by moss. Three domes, each large enough to fit easily over Atlantis' gate room and operations gallery, stood atop a long stone structure on a raised platform. Beneath the center dome, a short flight of steps led up to round opening with an embossed metal door.

  
***

  
"This is as far as we can take you," Raedyl said, halting at the point where the raised dirt path stopped and the grassy ground was marked by broken paving. It would have been more impressive if he hadn't also said that back at the beginning of the rice field, then decided that he had better guide them through it so they didn't fall in.

"Right," John told him, trying to sound reassuring. "We'll let you know how it goes."

It took a little longer to get rid of him, since Raedyl gazed at them worriedly for while, kept assuring them that he and the others would be right at the other end of the field, asked them several times to reconsider, and told them to be careful.

When Raedyl was finally retreating down the path, John turned to face the temple, squinting at it in the bright light. The thick vines covered everything except the round door and a path up the front steps. "So what do we think is in there?"

Rodney grimaced impatiently. "I'm not getting any life signs. According to them, it's a shadow, it's a giant Wraith, it's human, it's a monster in human form, it's an Ancestor in monster form, it has three heads, it has no heads." He slapped his detector against his palm. "Take your pick."

"Yeah, but they all agreed on when they saw it," Ford said. "They were getting the place ready for this big festival they do every year, cleaning it out, cutting the vines away, and that's when they started feeling like something was watching them. They all got together to search the place, and that's when it happened." Ford eyed the temple thoughtfully. "They didn't have the idea that the Ancients were scary until after this happened, so they must have seen something."

"Right." John bit his lip as he thought it over. "There's no way it could be a hologram?"

"If it's a hologram, it's not active now," Rodney said, waving the detector in exasperation. "There aren't even minimal power traces. And I'm having trouble picturing a shouting Ancient hologram with three heads."

Teyla regarded him with a lifted brow and John said, "We've accepted the fact that they're a little overwrought in their descriptions and moved on, all right?" Before Rodney could argue, John concluded, "So if it's not an intermittently activated hologram, it's something that's invisible to a life signs detector, probably irrational, and apparently pissed off."

Rodney waved an arm in annoyance. "Or they've been imagining the whole thing, which is the point I've been trying to get across."

"Dr. McKay," Teyla said, sounding tired, "Given our past experience, do you really believe that there is nothing dangerous inside?"

Rodney looked at her, then at the temple, then sighed. "Point taken."

John led the way up the moss-covered steps. The round door was sealed with a perfectly balanced disk of metal. It was embossed with Ancient writing, and some abstract patterns of squares and lines similar to the stained glass patterns in Atlantis. When John pushed lightly on it, it pivoted silently open.

Inside was a wide hall, lit by shafts of sunlight somehow reflected down from openings in the dome high overhead. Archways led into other rooms, hung with vines that had crept in through the openings. It smelled green and mossy, like damp earth. John stepped inside, feeling sand grit on the stone under his boots. He could see where the villagers had been cleaning the place: a pile of dead dry vines pulled off one of the walls lay near an abandoned straw broom. John had left his jacket in the jumper, and it was cooler in here than outside, enough to raise gooseflesh on his bare arms.

He moved through the foyer, the others spreading out behind him. The large room directly under the first dome seemed to be the best lit; sunlight fell down in dusty shafts, while the big archways in the walls led off into shadowy rooms. The silver panels Raedyl had mentioned hung on the stone pillars supporting the high ceiling. John circled one, seeing that it was etched with Ancient writing, images of solar systems, nebulae, cities with soaring towers and fantastic architecture. And on another pillar was the one with a clear image of two puddlejumpers flying towards an orbital gate. John said, "Well, somebody was familiar with Ancient technology."

"Yet those panels do not look like the work of the Ancestors," Teyla said softly.

"Yeah, there's nothing in Atlantis that looks like that," Ford agreed. "Are we sure this is an actual Ancient building?"

"No, we're not," Rodney answered, sounding preoccupied as he paced around, eyes on his detector. "Obviously whoever built this place knew who the Ancients were -- these depictions of the jumpers are far too accurate for guesswork. But this isn't an Ancient structure."

John nodded, disappointed but not too surprised. "They did say it was a temple _to_ the Ancestors, not _of_ the Ancestors."

"But when everybody else says that, they mean full of cool technology until the Wraith blew it up," Ford said, sounding discouraged.

"This looks like a museum," John said suddenly. From what Raedyl had said about the festival, his people didn't exactly use this place to worship the Ancients. They toured the temple, looking at the wall panels and telling stories about them. If Raedyl's people had been more advanced ten thousand years ago and in contact with the Ancients, then this place could have been built as a cultural heritage center or something similar. Which meant it might be even more helpful than an actual Ancient ruin; museums tended to include explanations of the artifacts displayed. "Hey, this could be--" He stopped at a whisper of sound, frowning. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Rodney demanded.

John shook his head, deciding that it must have been the breeze moving through the vines. Then he felt a light touch on his ear. John swore, jerking away and stepping back. He had been standing near one of the pillars, but there was nothing hanging down from it, nothing he could have brushed against. The others were staring at him, startled. Ford lifted his brows. "Sir?"

Feeling like he had just stepped into a bad horror movie, John began, "I know this sounds--" He flinched and gritted his teeth as it happened again, same ear. He finished, "Something's touching me."

Ford pivoted, P-90 lifted, staring around the chamber suspiciously. Rodney stepped to John's side, watching him uneasily, saying, "Are you serious?"

"Yes." It happened again and John clapped a hand over his ear. Then he felt something brush against the back of his neck. He steeled himself not to flinch, not to try to move away from it. "It's still happening."

"What is it?" Rodney asked urgently.

"McKay, if I knew that, it would be a lot less--" John winced and twitched involuntarily as he felt the touch in his hair. "Creepy."

Teyla stepped up behind him, laying her hand on his arm. "Where?"

"The back of my neck, my head," John said. Rodney waved a hand around and Teyla stood on tiptoes to look. It felt good to have them back there, less like there was an invisible thing looming over him. "You don't see anything?"

"I see nothing." Teyla shook her head. "I--" She jerked her hand back, startled. "I felt it. A touch on my hand." She rubbed her hand, brow furrowed and her expression uneasy. "That is very strange."

"Still no life signs, still no power," Rodney said, studying the detector with a grimace. "Not even minor fluctuations. Maybe we should get you two out of here."

Teyla said, "Perhaps there is something in here, something natural, that is making us think this is happening."

"What, like a hallucinatory plant, or something?" John asked hopefully. That would be a great explanation, but the thing now tugging on the shoulder of his tac vest felt awfully real.

Teyla drew breath to answer, then stopped, started, as something whispered directly over their heads.

"Hallucinogens in the air was a good thought," Rodney said, looking up nervously, "But I don't think that's going to be it."

The whisper was getting louder, more distinct, though John still couldn't make out the words. He said, "Just to make sure, you guys are hearing this too, right?"

"Yes, sir," Ford said, low-voiced. Rodney and Teyla just nodded, both looking around the chamber uneasily.

The thing, whatever it was, left off tugging at John, but the whispering grew louder, the words still indistinct. It was starting to sound angry.

John tried, "Hey, whatever you are, we can't understand you." No response, at least not as far as he could tell. The voice was getting louder. Even more disturbingly, it seemed to be coming from right beside him. Unless it was an acoustical trick, there wasn't any hidden loudspeaker. John lowered his voice to ask Rodney, "Could we be dealing with an Ascendant here? Like Chaya?"

Studying the shadows in the chamber's high ceiling, Rodney snorted. "That would explain why it keeps touching you-- Ow! That is not what I meant!"

Ignoring him, Teyla shook her head, though she looked uncertain. "I do not understand why an Ascendant would try to frighten the villagers -- or us. If it wanted them to leave the temple, it could simply have asked them to do so."

"There's also the fact that an angry Ascendant doesn't need to ask anyone to do anything," Rodney pointed out, rubbing the back of his head and glaring at John. "The one SG-1 encountered just blasted the Jaffa that were stupid enough to attack it."

"Yeah, but you can't find a power source or life signs," John pointed out. "I'm not coming up with a lot of alternate options here."

"I've read the files, but is there a way someone could Ascend and still be, you know, crazy?" Ford suggested, watching the room warily. "Because that would explain a lot."

They all looked at Rodney. He froze for a moment, his expression doing something complicated as he thought it through, then with a little laugh he said, "Oh, I don't think that's a serious possibility." Then he jerked his head toward the door and silently mouthed the words, _We should get out of here._

John was about to say that they needed to stay, at least until it started throwing rocks at them, because all they had was vague speculation as to what this thing was.

Then half a dozen Wraith stepped out of the far wall.

John yelled, already firing the P-90 as the others scrambled back. Ford and Teyla opened fire in tandem as Rodney dragged out his sidearm. They backed into the darker chamber behind them. Then John saw the bullets were passing right through the Wraith with no effect, he could see the dust and stone chips as the rounds hit the stone walls behind them, just as Teyla yelled, "I can sense nothing, they are not real!"

"Hold your fire!" John shouted. Ford stopped shooting, throwing John an uncertain look. Rodney lowered his pistol, shifting nervously.

The Wraith kept moving toward them, and the closer they got, the more substantial they looked. It took all John's self-control not to shoot, not to pull away as one passed close enough for him to smell the heavy odor of death, the odor of a hive ship, caught in its clothes. Ford twitched and Teyla turned her face away as one moved between them, and Rodney shied away from another, bumping into John. Then all the Wraith were past them, moving away, walking into the far wall and vanishing into the vine-covered stone. John took a deep breath.

Sounding a little shaky, Ford said, "That was weird."

"Well, if it wanted to scare us." Rodney was breathing hard, his expression appalled. "It did a damn good job." He gestured helplessly. "What the hell was the point of that?"

John grimaced; his heart was still pounding, unused adrenalin cold in his veins. "Maybe we just don't get its sense of humor."

Teyla threw him a look, her expression dismayed. "I truly hope that is not it."

Rodney just shook his head, looking around. "Maybe it wanted to get us into this room." He raised his voice to a shout. "You could have just asked, you know!"

Maybe that was it. John moved toward the center of the room, using his P-90's light to sweep the carved ceiling. It didn't look any different from the central chamber, except the silver panels on the pillars were more tarnished. John took another step forward and felt a hollow thump instead of solid stone under his boots. Then he felt it give way. As the others yelled in alarm, he flung himself forward, making a wild grab for the edge. It slipped past his hands and then he was falling.

  
***

  
With a horrified gasp, Rodney leapt forward just as the stone panel snapped shut. Ford and Teyla reached it a moment later, flinging themselves down and pushing on it, trying to find the edge.

"Life signs?" Ford asked desperately, looking up at Rodney.

Rodney fumbled the detector out of his pocket and studied the screen. Nothing. He swallowed in a suddenly dry throat, sick. "Oh, God. It's not showing him." Ford and Teyla were staring up at him in dismay. Then he looked at the screen again and swore at himself. "Wait, wait, no, it's all right."

Ford swore and Teyla began in exasperation, "Dr. McKay--"

"It's not showing any of us." He showed her the screen. "Or Raedyl's people outside, or the village. There must be shielding, or a field that's jamming it somehow. That must be why I can't get any power readings, because obviously that panel wasn't operating on rubber bands!"

"Fine, just try to pry this thing open," Ford ordered, grimacing in frustration as he dug at the edges of the panel.

"But the detector was working earlier," Teyla said, watching Rodney worriedly, "It showed all of us then. If there was a jamming field--"

Rodney waved a hand, pulling his pack off to get to his tool case. "I know, but I can't explain the invisible touching and the mass Wraith hallucination either, so let's just go with a jamming field for the moment, all right?"

They dug and pried at the panel, but it refused to move even a millimeter. Rodney broke his second screwdriver and swore in frustration. "This isn't going to work. There has to be another way."

"Some of the other floor panels sound hollow," Teyla reported. "We must try them as well."

"The Major is in this place somewhere. We just have to find him," Ford said tightly.

"We have to think about this rationally!" Rodney shouted. He knew shouting about being rational was ironic, but he couldn't help himself. "Look, look, the people here have been using this place for years. Something triggered this." He waved a hand. "Whatever this is." He turned to Teyla. "Can you go and ask them exactly what they did before they first had the feeling that something was different, before they first heard the voices?"

Teyla nodded. "I think you are right. I will go. Aiden?"

"Yeah, yeah, go." Ford waved her away, scraping dirt and muck away from another panel. "We need something to work with here."

Rodney just gritted his teeth, trying to pry at another panel, then gave it up and moved to the next.

  
***

  
John bounced off a stone surface with a bone-jarring crash, tumbled through darkness and empty air, then slammed into freezing cold water. Then everything went dark.

His next moment of awareness was something grabbing his arm and dragging him up into cold air. He coughed and choked, managed to get a ragged breath, still too stunned to see anything but a dark haze and the blazing afterimages of illusory Wraith melting out of the walls. Then something lifted his legs and dumped him on a cold stone surface.

He choked up more water, helpless and gasping, until he could breathe without coughing and get his eyes open. He lay in a crumpled heap on a square stone platform in a dimly-lit cave, surrounded by water. There was no one else here and the murky water was as still as glass. He was freezing, his throat and lungs were burning from the water that had gone down the wrong way, and his whole body was one big ache. He felt for his P-90, but it wasn't clipped to his vest; he dragged a hand over his holster and found it empty. His knife was gone, too. _Oh, that's just great._ He felt for his headset, and croaked, "Ford, Teyla, Rodney?" No answer, and no static. The base unit was dead.

John managed to shove himself mostly upright, the rough stone surface gritting painfully against his scraped hands. Squinting, he looked up, but there was no opening in the dark ceiling overhead. The light was coming from small yellow globes set into recesses in the rock walls; there was just enough light to show him that the cave seemed to curve around, narrowing into a smaller passage. _But Rodney said there was no power in the temple,_ John thought, still a little dazed and woozy. Of course, there hadn't been any life signs either. He took a deep breath, and bellowed, "Hey, can anybody hear me?"

No answer. "Crap," John said wearily. He had to get out of here and find the others before whatever had dropped him down the shaft decided to do the same to them, or came back to drown him for fun. He crawled to the edge of the platform to look down into the opaque green water. "Oh, good," he muttered. "Snakes, piranhas, water-breathing Iratus bugs, here I come."

He slipped into the water, grimacing. It only came up to mid-thigh but it was like ice and the cold shot right up his spine. The ground underfoot felt too smooth and even to be anything but paving; this must a flooded room. He sloshed around the platform, using his feet to feel for the P-90 and his pistol in case he had somehow lost them in the fall, but he couldn't find them. _Yeah, whatever dumped me down here wanted me unarmed._ That wasn't a happy thought.

Shivering, his feet already numb, he moved out into the center of the cave, looking up, trying to spot the panel that must be covering the shaft. Then he heard something.

It was the distinctive sound of an Ancient system powering up. It was so close to the noise that the Antarctic weapons chair had made when it had come alive under him that John froze, the back of his neck prickling. He half-expected to feel the data streams, to see the telemetry inside his head.

It was coming from the around the curve, where the cave narrowed down into a passage. "Right," John said aloud. _You wanted to find out what it was._

He sloshed through the murky water, heading toward it.

  
***

  
As Teyla ran down the raised path, Raedyl and the others leapt to their feet. "What happened?" Raedyl asked anxiously. "Did you see it?"

"Yes, yes, we saw it," she said. "But we do not know what it is yet. I must ask, do you remember if anything different happened in the temple before the apparition appeared?" She took a deep breath, trying to keep her expression calm. "If anything was moved, or broken, anything."

The others were shaking their heads, but Raedyl's wife Edar said, "The panel in the floor."

Raedyl turned to her, frowning. "What panel?"

"In the floor, in the furthest chamber to the left." Edar turned to Teyla, explaining, "There was a hole in the roof, so that chamber has always been full of sand and leaves and climbing vines. We decided to clean it out this year, and we found a panel in the floor. It had drawings on it, but tarvath mold -- very thick and nasty -- had grown over it, so we began to take it off for cleaning."

"They can be removed?" Teyla asked, startled. She had assumed the silver panels were part of the wall, or fixed to it in such a way that removing them would need tools far more advanced than these people owned. "You have done this before?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, to clean and polish them. They pop right off, then you can push them back into place. But this one was stuck, and we had to pry at it with a lever for a long time. It had just started to come off when--" She stared, brows drawing together. "When the apparition began to shout and throw things. You do not think..."

Raedyl flung his arms in the air. "That must be it! The apparition is angry because you moved that panel. If we had known that, we could have put it back!"

Teyla shook her head, already turning to run back to the temple. "I think it is too late for that."

She ran back across the raised path, through the grass and up the steps to the round doorway. She couldn't help pausing cautiously in the foyer, though her senses told her there were no Wraith in the vicinity. The others were right; if the thing here had wanted to frighten them, it had chosen a particularly cruel and effective method. And it frightened her more that it had obviously chosen the Major deliberately.

Aiden and McKay were still working at the stone panels in the second chamber, and though they had managed to clear the muck off most of the floor, exposing the seams, she could see they had had no further success. "I think we are looking in the wrong place," she told them.

Dr. McKay looked up at her, startled. "What? What do you mean?"

"Right before the disturbance started, the villagers disturbed a floor panel that had never been touched before." Teyla flicked on the P-90's light and led the way back through the next archway. "If whatever is doing this is below this level of the temple, there maybe another shaft under that panel--"

"Good thinking," Aiden said, pushing to his feet to follow her as McKay hastily gathered their scattered tools. Aiden was trying to sound confident, but she could hear the fear and worry in his voice.

She found the chamber Edar had described on the far end of the temple, just off the large chamber below the leftmost dome. Shining her light across the floor, she spotted the panel immediately. It was in the center of the floor where the vines and sand had been cleared away, a large silver square partially pried up from where it had been inset into the stone floor.

McKay knelt beside it, working his fingers under the loose end, and she stood over him, directing her light down so he could see. He said tensely, "I can feel air movement. You were right, there is another shaft under here." He grabbed for his pack, dumping out the tools again.

"McKay," Aiden said, sounding deeply worried. He had moved around to the front of the panel, shining his light down on the etching. "Take a look at this."

Teyla shifted to look, even as McKay shoved to his feet and stepped around.

The panel was still partially covered with mold and it took Teyla a moment to make out the figures. It depicted Wraith, a large number of them, attacking a group of humans. Ford asked, "That's not supposed to be showing what's down there, is it?"

"I have no idea." McKay's mouth twisted and he took a sharp breath. "But we need to hurry."

  
***

  
Chilled to the bone and soaking wet, John waded through the green water, following the curve of the cave around. It narrowed into a passage maybe twelve feet across, then curved again further up. The yellow globes were still the only light, not that he had actually expected this passage to lead outside. He could still hear the low power hum of Ancient equipment, and he kept catching fragments of what sounded like a one-sided conversation, coming from somewhere up ahead. "This is a little _Phantom of the Opera_," he said aloud, "Only without the opera."

Then he heard a trace of musical notes, mingled with the voice. John stopped, frozen for a moment, thinking, _Okay. Reaching a new level of weird here._ And he should probably stop giving it ideas.

Just as he reached the second turn his foot caught on something and he fell forward into the water, barely catching himself on a stone platform just below the surface. After a moment of splashing and flailing, he realized he had tripped over a set of steps. He climbed up it to find himself in only ankle-deep water. He was almost too numb with cold by that point to feel any relief, but at least it was easier to walk.

As he stepped around the curve, he saw a set of metal blast doors, wedged partly open. He approached slowly, craning his neck to see through the gap between them. The voice, the sounds, were definitely coming from here. He thought the passage opened up into a another room, but it was dark past the doors.

John paused, one hand on the cold metal of the blast door. Whatever it was, it was sitting in there, in the dark, talking and singing to itself. He took a deep breath. _This isn't going to get any easier._ He pushed at the doors, but they were wedged into place, immovable. At least it couldn't trap him in there. Or at least that's what it wanted him to think.

He managed to wiggle through the opening, found another step up that took him out of the water entirely. The light only fell a short distance from the doors, but the way the voice and the other noises were echoing, the chamber had to be at least as large as the water cave. And even this close to the source, he still couldn't understand a word the voice was saying, or even if it was saying it in Ancient.

John took a couple of careful steps forward, feeling broken crystal crunch under his boots. As his eyes adjusted he could make out shapes. Glass or crystal canisters against one wall, things that might have been consoles or other equipment, the metal blasted and twisted into abstract shapes. The voice echoing off the stone was starting to get loud enough to hurt his ears. He called, "Okay, I'm here! What do you want?"

The voice stopped abruptly.

And the room was suddenly brightly lit, an alarm klaxon wailing, echoing off the stone. John jumped and flinched, looking around in shock; this wasn't the same room. The walls were lined with copper metal, gleaming dully in the white light from copper and turquoise-banded pillars. In the center was a circle of consoles, with the crystal touchpads of Ancient equipment, a holographic display hovering above one. The glass canisters he had caught a glimpse of were stasis chambers built into the wall, all empty. _No,_ he corrected himself. _Same room, different time_.

John heard footsteps behind him and whipped around. The blast doors were open and the cave passage was now free of water and paved with green marble. A young man was running headlong down the passage. He was skinny, blond and wild-eyed, dressed in an unfamiliar white and gray uniform.

John figured this was another illusion, just like this room, just like Wraith up in the temple. He watched the guy run through the open blast doors and pause to hit the wall console. The guy backed rapidly into the room as the doors slid closed, and John was so convinced that he was going to be insubstantial, he fell on his ass when the guy slammed into him.

The guy spun to look down at him, staring in incomprehension. John shoved to his feet, demanding, "Who the hell are you?"

The guy shook his head, frowning as if he didn't understand. He said urgently, "The shield's down, the Wraith are on the surface!"

John said, "Hey, I know this isn't real. Why did you bring me here?" He had time to notice the kid's jacket was torn and stained with blood.

The guy just stared at him. "What?"

"It was you, right?" John was beginning to think this kid had no more idea of what was going on than he had. "My team was up in the temple, we heard voices, saw a bunch of Wraith that weren't really there, then the floor opened up and I fell -- does any of that sound familiar?"

The guy shook his head, baffled. "There's no temple on the surface, it's a defensive facility, to defend this colony. And the Wraith destroyed it, they'll be down here in moments. I have to arm the security system for the lower levels!" He grabbed John's arm, yanking him toward the ring of consoles.

John didn't intend to be yanked, but the guy nearly pulled him off his feet. He staggered, catching himself against a pillar as the guy let him go. Nothing they had discovered about the Ancients had ever indicated that they had super strength, and this slight teenager was as strong as a Wraith. As strong as whatever had lifted John's nearly inert body out of the water and dumped him on the platform.

At least John knew now that he hadn't been suddenly transported to the past, which was a big relief. It was this kid who was still in the past, who was living in the illusion. John said, "Uh, the Wraith aren't out there anymore. The defensive facility's gone, blasted off the planet thousands of years ago." The kid had to be an Ascendant, because the only other option was ghost, and John wasn't quite willing to go there yet.

The kid turned to face him, asking, "Are you out of your mind?"

_No, but I think you are,_ John thought. "Look, what's your name?"

The kid hesitated, confused. "My name is Everon, but--"

"Everon, this is an illusion, a dream. This place was destroyed centuries ago. There's no power, most of it's flooded. The building up on the surface is a temple now, and even it's so old nobody here remembers who built it."

Everon just gestured around, his face incredulous, as if asking John to take in the evidence of his own senses. "Then what's this?"

"This is a memory," John insisted. "Your memory that you sucked me into." Everon was now looking at him like John was crazy, and he probably had a point. If Everon really wasn't aware of what he was doing, this had to sound nuts. "Come on, work with me here. You must know everybody who's stationed at this base. So who am I, where did I come from? I'm not even one of you -- I'm human."

"You're not human, you have the gene!" Everon shouted at him.

John lifted his brows and leaned on the console. "Oh, really? You can read my DNA by looking at me? Think about that for a minute!"

Everon just stared at him, breathing hard, and John pushed his advantage, saying, "I'm human. I was born on Earth. Your people went back there, after the Wraith..." Everon just looked more confused and John shook his head helplessly. Maybe getting into all that was a bad idea. It had to have happened after Everon had died anyway. Maybe long after. "Don't you remember Ascending?"

Everon winced. "I'm not going to Ascend. I can't."

"I think you've gave it a try," John said pointedly. "I don't believe in ghosts. Or I didn't, until about a half hour ago. But I know about Ascendants and they're usually a lot more-- They know what they are. Maybe you got stuck somehow?"

Everon turned back to the console, his face hard. "I have to arm the security system."

"It's a little late for that," John protested. "You obviously brought me down here for a reason. If you just listen to me--" He heard the hollow thump of someone banging on metal and stopped, "What's that?"

Everon shook his head, distracted, most of his attention on the console. "I don't know."

The thumping continued, and John thought he heard a muffled voice. Betting this wasn't part of the dream, he pushed away from the console and followed the sound to the back of the chamber. There was another smaller blast door set into the wall there, and the thumping was coming from it. John banged on the door, then put his ear to the metal. "Rodney, Teyla? Is that you?"

From the other side he heard a muffled, "Major!" It was Teyla's voice, and he thought he could hear Rodney arguing with Ford in the background. She continued, "We found a stairway beneath a panel, but we cannot open this door -- the console is broken and there is no power."

John turned back to Everon. "Can you open this door?" He didn't even know if the door was really here or just in Everon's imagination. He said urgently, "It's my team, they were on the surface. You have to let them in. Because of the attack up there, remember?"

Playing into Everon's dream world was probably not helping John make his case, but it was the right thing to say at the moment. Everon nodded urgently, and turned to another board, hitting a combination of touchpads. John stepped back as the door slid upward. Rodney stumbled out, with Ford and Teyla right behind him.

"Major!" Rodney said, startled. "We--" His eyes widened as he took in the room. "Oh, oh, my God this is--"

"Don't get excited," John told him. "It's not real."

"It's not real?" Rodney demanded, appalled, "But--"

"Uh, sir, who's that?" Ford asked warily. Everon was still working at the controls, his face intent.

John lowered his voice carefully. "He's the Ascendant. He's doing all this but I don't think he knows it."

Rodney stared at Everon uncertainly, then around at the room. "So Ford was right, he is crazy."

"Rodney, could you yell that a little louder?" John asked in exasperation. "Let's not antagonize the all-powerful being who's a little confused right now, okay?"

"Well I just--" Rodney gestured around at the gleaming equipment, frustrated. "Wait, even if this isn't real, is it accurate? Could we--"

"Major," Ford said suddenly. "The doors--"

John turned. Across the chamber, the seam between the blast doors was starting to glow. As he watched, one door shuddered and jerked sideways. Through the gap, John saw the gray boney mask of a Wraith drone.

John grimaced. He knew it had to be part of the illusion, but it still made his heart pound with the instinct to start shooting. Ford and Teyla were covering the doors and Rodney had drawn his sidearm, shifting uncertainly. Rodney said hurriedly, "Never mind, I've realized it's better if this entire scenario is inaccurate."

Teyla shook her head, her expression pained, and said, "I can still sense nothing; these Wraith are not real either." She looked worriedly at Everon. "He is remembering the moment of his death?"

"Yeah." John nodded grimly. "I think that's it."

Everon had frozen, staring at the doors, at the Wraith. He whispered, "They're here. They're here and I can't stop them. My codes don't work. Something's wrong with the system. They must have sabotaged it somehow, I can't--"

John went to him, grabbing his arm. "Those aren't real. Just a memory of what happened here." _Your memory,_ he didn't say. These had to be the Wraith that had killed him. Everon shook him off, and John turned impatiently to Ford. "Shoot one of them."

The doors were open further and the first Wraith had shoved its way through. Ford lifted his P-90 and fired--

\--and the Wraith's body jerked as the bullets struck it. It fell back against the blast doors, then shoved its way upright, hissing at them, its body already regenerating.

John stared. "Oh, crap." _We're in Everon's head, and this is real to him._ And whether Everon knew it or not, he was an Ascendant, and if he wanted something to be real, it was.

Rodney said urgently, "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that that wasn't what you expected to happen."

"Keep firing, and fall back," John shouted at the others. "Get back up those stairs!" He turned back to Everon, saying, "This doesn't have to happen again. It's over. You can make it stop!"

The blast doors jolted open and more Wraith forced their way in. Ford and Teyla were hitting them with sustained fire and Rodney was yelling for John to get out of there and John could barely hear him over the staccato din of the P-90s. Everon just stood there, frozen. Then the first Wraith grabbed John by the shoulder of his tac vest. Even knowing this had to be a hallucination, John lost it, throwing a punch at the creature and trying to twist away. Impervious, it slammed him down on his back on the nearest console and--

\--and nothing. The room was suddenly silent, the Wraith frozen in place like a halted recording.

Still pinned to the console, John twisted his head. Everon was leaning against a pillar, a hand over his eyes. He said quietly, "This is not how it happened. There was no one with me."

"Oh, good." John took a sharp breath in relief. His brain might have been really clear on the fact that this wasn't real, but the rest of him wasn't. And his back really hurt. "Give me a hand here?"

Everon didn't move but the room did, doing a turning twisting thing which somehow ended with the Wraith being gone and John on his feet. "Whoa," John muttered, grabbing hold of one of the consoles to ride out the head rush. That no one else seemed to have noticed the change was not comforting.

Everon was still staring at the floor, brow furrowed. He said, "How long? You said...ten thousand years."

"Maybe a little longer," John told him.

Teyla eased forward cautiously. "The villagers -- the people who live on the surface now -- they care for the temple built over this site. They disturbed a panel in the floor that covered a stairway leading down into this room. Is that what woke you?"

"Or is that when you found your way out?" Rodney asked, watching him grimly, mouth twisted. "Were you awake all that time, just repeating this--" he gestured around the room, "--over and over?"

Everon shook his head, but the tension was draining out of his expression. He said, "I have to-- I can't--"

And John was standing in a dark room, freezing cold and dripping wet. For an instant he thought he was there alone, that it was a head injury-induced hallucination caused by slamming into the rock wall of the shaft and nearly drowning. Then he heard Rodney say, "What? This is-- Oh, fine." And flashlights flicked on, splitting the darkness.

Teyla and Ford were shining their lights around, revealing blasted metal and broken glass. John said, "Hey, some light here," and leaned over the console.

Rodney came over with his pocket flashlight, and in its light John saw the scatter of bones on the floor near the shattered security station. "I suppose that's him," Rodney said, grimacing.

"Not anymore." John winced. "Let's get out of here."

  
***

  
It wasn't nearly as cold going up the steps back into the main temple, but John didn't know if that was because the air was actually warmer or he was just reaching that stage of hypothermia. He made it on his own, with Rodney giving him the occasional helpful shove from behind; that was a relief, because it was always embarrassing when Teyla had to throw him over her shoulder and carry him.

The temple itself felt different, the atmosphere less oppressive, the light falling through the openings in the dome brighter. They got outside to the grassy area below the steps, and that was where John decided to lie down and rest.

Raedyl and his family came running over to see if they were all right, and John just let the hot afternoon sun seep through his clothes and skin while Ford and Teyla explained that the temple should be back to normal now, and hey, Raedyl was right all along, it had been the ghost of an Ancestor.

Rodney plopped down in the grass next to John. "Why did you stay? That idiot could have killed you."

John rolled his head. "Maybe. Maybe the whole thing would have just started over again." He yawned. And he had bargained on the fact that in his right mind, Everon wouldn't leave anyone to the Wraith. That the possibility would snap him out of his dream world.

Raedyl and his family went up the steps and through the door, anxious to see the temple again. Teyla sat down next to them, cradling her P-90 in her lap, smiling. "They are worried that you were injured while helping free the Ancestor's Ghost. I have strongly implied that several cartloads of their best kena and dolmi fruit would improve your condition."

John grinned at her. "Good for you."

Ford was standing over them, keeping watch by habit. He pulled his cap off to wipe his forehead and said, "Okay, sir, so why did he pull you down there? Did he want somebody to talk him out of it?"

Teyla looked thoughtful. "Perhaps some part of his mind was aware of his condition, and wanted help."

"Or other Ascendants were involved," Rodney said, eyeing the temple suspiciously. "I'm not sure he was functional enough to go to that much effort to help himself."

"I thought that was against their rules," Ford said, frowning. "That they couldn't affect things in the real world, not without getting in trouble with the others."

John thought it was a possibility. Chaya had been able to fly under the radar long enough to visit Atlantis; there could have been another Ascendant who had hid its intentions from the others, wanting to help Everon and waiting for the opportunity. Waiting for some humans that didn't run from disembodied voices, who had seen the Wraith for the illusions they were. But they would never know for certain. He said, "Rules, whatever. He got out, that's all that matters."

**end**


End file.
